THE beleaguered Security Advisor to President James Michel, Mr. Andre Kilindo, has finally been booted out of State House for good. The reason for the dismissal, although politely termed “resignation” to allow Kilindo to leave with some semblance of dignity, was apparently for embarrassing the President personally and the SPPF government generally.
However, friends of Kilindo have quickly jumped to his defence and argued that the sacking was not justified as there are people close to President Michel who have done much worse than Kilindo and, for reasons best known to the President himself, have got away with it. People like Glenny Savy, David Savy, Joel Morgan, Francis Cheng-Leng, amongst others, have all, at one point or another, caused embarrassment to President Michel and his government.
Minister Joel Morgan, who controversially lost 4.5 million US dollars of public money in the most suspicious of circumstances, is the biggest culprit of them all. Until today this money has not been recovered despite his promises to the contrary. Although he was re-shuffled to another Ministry, (Environment) no further action was taken to make him accountable. The embarrassing episode was quickly swept under the carpet and Morgan continues to enjoy the perks and privilege of an SPPF Minister irrespective.
Francis Cheng-Leng, for his part, has also been embroiled in the Plantation Club saga and lately his name came up in the controversial Euro 50 million loan incident with Lehman’s Brothers. Unlike Kilindo, all these people have kept their jobs and operated with impunity in President Michel’s government. Kilindo’s crime, if it may be called that, was to employ illegal Chinese workers on his fishing boat. However, the difference between Kilindo and the others are that Kilindo got caught red handed whilst the others managed to get away with it.
Kilindo, who was surplus to requirement anyway, is also politically insignificant. By his action, he has presented President Michel with the perfect opportunity to get rid of him. Therefore, to a large extent, he is to blame for his own predicament.
Kilindo, who was the former Commissioner of Police, has been operating his fishing boat, namely St. Andre, for years now. The Public Service Orders provides that if a Civil Servant decides to engage in private business whilst still being employed by government, the person has to seek and obtain the permission of the Minister of Administration first. It is not clear whether Kilindo sought and did obtain such permission for him to operate a fishing boat whilst still being employed by government.
What is certain though is the fact that five Chinese fishermen were caught red-handed fishing sea cucumber onboard his boat. To add insult to injury, Randolph Payet, who also probably deserve to get the sack as well, employed an illegal procedure to deal with Kilindo summarily by “compounding” the offences and applying a meagre R.20,000 fine. In the past, Payet and SFA have insisted on fine amounting to R.300,000 minimum for the same or similar offences from other local fishermen and boat owners.
The law provides for the mechanism known as “compounding” to be employed only after a person has been charged with one or more offences. It stands to reason therefore, that one cannot compound offences which had not yet been proffered against a person. In the case of Kilindo, he was not charged with any offence at all and he was not made to answer to any charges before the Courts.
The whole procedure adopted by Randolph Payet to deal with Kilindo was clearly illegal and foreign to the laws of Seychelles. It was just a smokescreen to camouflage Kilindo and give him preferential treatment because of who he is. In fact, the fine was paid by Mr. Woo, a mysterious Chinese businessman on behalf of Kilindo. Kilindo claims that Woo was in fact the one responsible for the offences as he was renting his boat at the time. However, Woo has no licence to fish sea cucumber and operated the business on Kilindo’s licence. Since a licence is not transferable the practice was illegal from the start.
Kilindo continues to employ Chinese fishermen on his boat even after the incident and Le Nouveau Seychelles Weekly took a picture of at least one Chinese gentleman still working on the boat not too long ago. Although President James Michel has chosen Kilindo to make an example out of, he is yet to deal with the other members of his government who gets up to mischief and controversy. Whether President Michel has the courage to curb the antics of his high profile government officials when the opportunity presents itself, is a matter which is yet to be seen. The jury is still out!